Healthcare
The main emphasis of district development plan is on improved public health, and, many improvements have been made in nutrition and in maternal and child care. Many of the endemic diseases, such as malaria, pneumonia, and diseases of the gastroenteritis group, has been eliminated.
In 2010, there were eight (8) health facilities providing health care to inhabitants of the Municipality. Out of the eight, five were public or government health facilities while the other three were privately owned. These health facilities occasionally referred cases to the Sunyani Regional Hospital. In 2010, the problem with health facilities in the Municipality was that only two hospitals in the municipality were privately owned and this made the cost of health delivery very high. There was also the problem of spatial disparity in the distribution or location of facilities.
There were a total of two hundred and ninety-eight (298) health professionals manning these health facilities in 2010. As at 2010:
- There were six (6) medical doctors
- Four (4) medical assistants
- Sixty-six (66) nurses and midwives and
- Twenty-nine (29) support staffs working in the municipality.
The Methodist hospital was the highest employer, employing about 183 professionals. In 2010, staffing level of the population to doctor ratio standed at 1:11,330. This was an improvement compared to the 2007 ratio of 1:16,176. In 2010, the Municipality also had a population to nurse ratio of 1:1545. Even though the municipality had recorded some significant increases in the number of health professionals in the past two years since 2008, the numbers in 2010, were still not enough considering that the hospitals in the municipality serve as a referral point for health facilities in the Tain District.
Read more about this topic: Wenchi District